Lorelai

Lorelai climbs straight out of a Rhine legend, the siren whose song lured boatmen onto the rocks at the river's narrowest bend. The German name Loreley combines a local dialect word for murmuring with ley, rock. Heinrich Heine turned the story into a famous 1824 ballad; a century and a half later, Gilmore Girls gave the name its American coffee-and-quip makeover, making Lorelai Gilmore one of television's most quoted mothers. Ranked 402 in the U.S., it rides a wave of long, romantic L-names. Three syllables cascading like water, a name that hums even before you say it aloud.